Are Boomers Gloom and Doomers?

Really? We don’t know about you, but we’re not feeling the urge to throw ourselves off the nearest cliff…and neither are our boomer friends. So where is this depressing news coming from?

Well, we can thank the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends for being the bearer of such depressing news. According to their recent study, 80% of baby boomers are pessimistic about the current direction of the United States. They also say boomers report less overall life satisfaction during their adulthood than previous generations have reported. And about a fifth of us think our standard of living is lower than that of our parents.

But apparently the Pew folks are only in the business of asking if we’re happy, not why. They offer no explanation for boomers’ gloomy outlook. Some other experts theorize that it’s just a result of middle-age; some say it’s an inevitable flip side of our youthful days when we were all optimistic idealists.

What do we say? It’s the economy stupid! Many of us have been laid off, and are faced with competing against much younger workers in a country with a 10% unemployment rate. Many of us have seen our retirement plans put on life support, and realize we’ll be working well beyond the traditional retirement age of 65.

But having said that, we still don’t believe boomers are as despairing as this study claims. Our generation has been through incredible turmoil as we’ve grown up – and grown older. We’re a pretty darn resilient lot.

So, you may be able to count us down at the moment – but don’t count us out. Someone once said, “A hard fall means a high bounce…if you’re made of the right material.”